Know. Grow. Go
What do we need to become a Church that Knows Christ, is Growing in Christ, and is Going in service to Christ and others?
Only one thing and one thing alone can be sufficient for such a task: We need the Spirit of the living God. What we need is God himself.
Knowing Christ
As a young man who grew up in a Christian home one of the things I became accustomed to was “praying” before meals and bed. “Thank you God for this food and for this day.” For me, it became kind of ritualistic.
Prayer is not a ritual we must do before we are allowed to eat or go to bed; it is a real conversation with the real God. Prayer is a gift of grace to those who know God through Christ. Therefore, when we pray we are doing something in the real presence of the living God.
This fact alone should humble and prepare our hearts for prayer because we know we have absolutely no right to what we are seeking. We come to Christ like the tax collector, not the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14).
Knowing Christ is a gift of grace. Charles Spurgeon puts it this way, “We shall not have the reserve of a slave [when praying] but the loving reverence of a child, yet not an impudent impertinent child, but a teachable obedient child, honoring his Father, and therefore asking earnestly, but with deferential submission to his Father’s will.”
This whole matter of Growing in Christ and Going in service for Christ is not really about our abilities or our intentions; it is far more about our posture towards the one true God (Knowing Christ). Surely, if we ever hope to Grow or Go in God-honoring ways, not in man-pleasing ways, it will be because we have truly come to Know who God is, and who we are in Christ.
Growing in Christ
A short survey of the New Testament leads me to ask, “Is there such a thing as Christian growth without growth of love in the Spirit?” (Answer: no, there isn’t such a thing.)
Even though he had never met them, Paul loved the believers in Colosse, and he wanted them to grow. So what did he do? He never stopped praying for them. Growth comes from the Spirit of the Living God.
When we know who God is, we begin to depend on Him for growth in ourselves and others, and that dependence looks like real prayer in the presence of a real God for real people and expecting real change.
Here’s how Paul said it in his letter to the church in Colosse:
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him; bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:9-14).
What had Paul heard? He had heard about their faith in the gospel and love in the Spirit.
And what did that lead him to do? Not just pray, but to pray continually for them.
When we know Christ, we can approach the Father in prayer on behalf of Christ’s sanctifying blood, and in his presence we can boldly ask him for what we want.
Here is Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, “God, fill these brothers and sisters with the knowledge of your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Then he tells the Colossians why he is asking God for these things. Paul, the leader of the missionary movement of the gospel to the nations, has not figured out a great disciple-making strategy; he has been redeemed by a great God. When Paul hears about faith and love exemplified in Colossae it leads him pray without ceasing for God’s filling.
The upside-down nature of God’s kingdom is that growth happens when His people become more and more convinced that what they need can only be supplied by God and they seek him under the finished work of Christ and begin to expect Him to supply it.
Going in service to Christ and others.
Going in service to Christ and others is not a special task for people in vocational ministry. Christian service is simply people who are in Christ, people of the light, walking in the light.
Jesus said it this way: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16).
And John’s first epistle spells it out this way: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:5-9).
Walking in the light and being a light is pursuing personal holiness, confessing sin, keeping short accounts, forgiving and seeking forgiveness, putting off darkness and pursuing all that is good and right and true.
“Going in service to Christ and others” is an expression of who we are in Christ, an admonition to not let our pride cause us to cover up the light we have received in Christ. “Going in service to Christ and others” is an admonition not to revert back to the dark ways in which we walked prior to Christ, when we isolated ourselves from the world that needs the light.
At the beginning I asked, “What do we need to become a Church that Knows Christ, is Growing in Christ, and is Going in service to Christ and others?” and then I answered: “Only one thing and one thing alone: We need the Spirit of the living God. What we need is God himself.”
Here is the good news. Patterson Park Church has everything it already needs. In Christ we have the Spirit of the living God, we have God Himself.
May Patterson Park Church be a fellowship that is always moving forward in Knowing Christ, is Growing in Christ, and is Going in service to Christ and others.
Persevere.
Joey Turner
Pastor of Student Ministries